RichardGibbons

I have no idea--any comment would be a complete guess. However, I do believe in Bill Gates' idea, "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten." So, my guess using that heuristic is that in 10 years earnings will be impacted, and I believe that impact, drastic or not, will have a drastic impact on the stock price because I think investors are smart enough to recognize that once the market starts shrinking, it's going to be relentlessly shrinking for a while. (Also, I don't know the business at all--no research whatsoever--but I was simply responding to the question, "Can you find reasons why this company won't be materially better in 5 years?", a question phrased as if there were very unlikely to be any reasons. It seems almost certain to me that in 30 years auto insurance rates will be much lower on a real basis, and it's conceivable to me that the change begins to happen in the next 5 years. But I'm extremely ignorant on this one and have no horse in the race, so a wise investor would give no weight to my opinion at all. So, I think that you're quite sensible to assign a probability of it happening--in this case, you have decided ~0%--and running the numbers from there.)

Isn't the big one that, in 30 years, auto insurance prices are almost certain to be much lower as a result of cars becoming self driven. It's unclear when the inflection in auto insurance will actually strike, but it seems conceivable to me that it could be in the next 5 years (and even if it's not in the actual financials, insurance stock price might already be discounting it in five years.)

I actually think the politics section here has had value to me. It seems pretty obvious when people are just echoing what Dear Leader told them to echo because the arguments are typically quite awful, or are often effectively "let's change the topic!". On the other hand, when they do give real arguments, they will sometimes provide perspectives I'm not exposed to elsewhere. And that has value to me, learning other people's perspectives.

This is a really nice summary of the situation, I think.

Yeah, maybe. But it's still a pity that America's outcomes are going to be so awful as a result.

One of the the most annoying but under-reported things with Trump will be that, because he's making so many stupid decisions that will leave America so much worse off, people will start to believe that there's no real alternative to the Democrats. There will be an entire cohort of voters particularly susceptible to supporting toxic economic policies and discriminatory social policies just because the alternative illustrated by Trump will be so unpalatable. America really needs a Mitt Romney right now.

The answer is that the western world has been incredibly successful under the rules-based international order. It lead to unprecedented peace and prosperity for westerners, to the extent that westerners believe that peace and prosperity is the norm. Disrupting that order has the potential for chaos and really bad outcomes for westerners (wars, lower standards of living, reduction in freedoms, assassinations of leaders....) Risking that amazing prosperity for something that isn't that important is a terrible idea. And yeah, you may believe that's just handwaving, but I think one must recognize that increasing chaos in the world is a really bad strategy for the people who are massive winners in the existing political order. Maybe everything doesn't fall apart, but taking the risk when you're already way ahead is still a bad bet. It's roughly the same as Buffett's statement, paraphrased roughly as, "why the fuck would I play Russian roulette for any amount of money and any arbitrarily large number bullets when I'm already a multi-billionaire?"

I think Canada is in jeopardy. I'd give it a 2% chance. I think it'd happen roughly the same way that it happened with VZ--yelling about drugs and socialism, with the added justification that it is necessary for American defence. And, because Trump would be doing it, I'd expect some people on COBAF to say it was justified. At this point, it's pretty clear how this stuff works to anyone who cares to think.

Oh, if there's no difference between a gun and a knife, surely then a knife should be sufficient for your self defence needs. Strangely, Canada's per capita knife death aren't comparable to USA's per capita gun deaths. And even more oddly, the number of knife homicides in Canada is still below the number of gun homicides in Canada. The evidence is pretty convincing that more legal guns in society results in more gun deaths (and you'd probably actually agree with me if I changed the word "guns" to "drugs"). I could argue your other points, but they're not good points for pretty obvious reasons, and I don't think you really care to have a good-faith discussion. So feel free to feel great about how you're completely right, that the massive number of gun deaths in the USA is completely unrelated to the fact that it's easy to own guns there. I think Kirk actually had the right argument, the one that's actually plausible: that the benefits of guns outweighs the excess gun deaths. It just seems silly when people try to argue that gun deaths are uncorrelated to the degree that guns are legal in a country.

I guess the other dimension of it is that "bad guys" have degrees of badness. Organized crime associates will have always have guns, regardless of the law. But, if guns are restricted, every corner drug pusher or petty criminal drug addict won't. And there's much more of the latter, so giving them guns makes a huge difference in bad gun outcomes.

Because reality says it does. You have basically every country in the the entire developed world as evidence. (Of course, in the USA, you already have guns, and it's unclear if you can reverse that, but I think it's pretty unlikely that you could. So it's kind of a moot point for the USA, but it suggest that other countries should be loathe to follow the USA's strategy when it comes to guns.)

The deaths of animals while hunting would be most of the "good" gun deaths. But for human deaths, I'd say good deaths are guns being used to prevent a violent threat. e.g. shooting a home invader, a mass murderer, kidnapper, or whatever. Most deaths caused by police gunfire are good gun deaths. The wallet scenario is the fun one for gun control, because I agree that you absolutely wouldn't want to shoot them dead if you could be certain they only wanted your wallet. And in Canada, you generally don't need to shoot someone dead, because there largely isn't a serious risk to your life because nobody's pointing a gun at you. In contrast, in the USA, there's a higher chance someone's pointing a gun at you, which increases the risk of death, even if they say they just want your wallet. So, it makes sense to use more lethal force in that scenario. That's why, while the numbers of robberies in New York and London are similar, the chance of dying in a robbery is 54 times higher in New York.

Okay, so I think you're trying to say, "the desirability of carrying a gun depends on the probability of encountering gun violence--if you're more likely to encounter it, you should be more willing to carry a gun." And the stuff about race is just shorthand for expressing that different people have different probabilities of encountering gun violence. Is that right? (I think I agree with that--if everyone has a gun, I should probably have one too.)

Yeah, I don't blame anyone who owns a gun--I've never lived in a society where it's commonplace, so maybe I would if I did. I actually just find the math of life and death situations interesting. Like, if you're held at gunpoint by a stranger wanting a wallet, what strategy will result in the best chance of going home to your family? Or alternatively, if you are creating a new country, what are laws that will minimize bad gun deaths without getting rid of many good gun deaths? Because I'm kind of with you with the "prepared to use it" argument. I'm open to using whatever level of force seems required to protect my family's lives. But my primary goal is to protect their lives, not use force, so I'm interested in what I can do to maximize that probability. I do like that, in Canada, the probability of me needing to deal with a bad guy with a gun is tiny compared to the USA, even if people seem to think that restricting guns only helps bad guys. I struggle to explain that discrepancy without explanations related to gun restrictions. Maybe Canadians are just nicer, so the bad guys decide not to use guns when committing their crimes?

I'm 100% sure of the point you're trying to make here. Is it just that, as long as you're white, it's cool because you're unlikely to be killed by a gun unless you want to be? Or more like, "if you group people by race, everyone gets what they deserve because people are just killing (or not killing) their own race." Yeah, that it might be a completely sensible position if you start from the premise that guns shouldn't be hard to get. Like, if anyone has guns, everyone should have guns. Or Heinlein--"An armed society is a polite society."

Yep, that's the attitude I mean. I suspect being eager to engage in a gun fight is likely to increase your chance of being shot when confronted with someone else holding a gun. I'm curious. In this fantasy, when you grab for your holstered gun, does it surprise the person aiming the gun at your chest? Is that why they're not shooting you? Or they're bad enough to try to rob you, but not bad enough to pull the trigger while you're fumbling away? Is it your belief that they're not prepared to use it, while you are? That said, everyone dies eventually. Being shot on the street while potentially killing a "bad guy" is a pretty good way to go, particularly if you don't have anything worthwhile happening in your life.

Yep, this is what I meant when I said, "having a gun" is likely correlated with "likely to do something that gets yourself killed when being threatened with a gun."

Yep, this is my point. I think you're significantly more likely to die in this scenario than just handing over your wallet.

I think it's largely because many Canadians don't like the idea of easily-preventable gun deaths, while many Americans see it as an acceptable trade-off, as Charlie Kirk did. I wonder if this is actually true. I suspect you having a gun might increase your chance of death from such an encounter. Even if that is the case, I guess it depends on your definition of "better off"--gaining an increased feeling of control at the cost of a higher chance of death. I'm actually quite curious about this, but it's probably hard to find out the answer in a scientific way, because "having a gun" is likely correlated with "likely to do something that gets yourself killed when being threatened with a gun."

For sure it isn't the usual. But the nice thing about the difference sizes of the countries is that even if it isn't usual, the rare exceptions can make a difference. BC has about 14500 doctors. In May, 2 months after the government put in place a program to make it easier for American doctors to move, 573 doctors had expressed interest. I think that should be enough to move the needle on healthcare outcomes here. (I think you have some computer science background. In many respects, BC's healthcare system is an overburdened queue. In some situations, adding a relatively small amount of processing resources can potentially help you go from a queue where tasks are piling up indefinitely to one where you're actually keeping up with demand.)

Yep, our family doctor left Denver a few years ago "for political reasons". I didn't ask for details. She's been our best doctor ever--very proactive and engaged, and is now opening a clinic here with 5 other US ex-patriot doctors. In this respect, MAGA has been amazingly great for Canada.

Ah, okay, that makes sense. I think I almost never do that sort of investing, where I assume that I'll hold until a particular unscheduled event happens. I typically buy with the intention of taking a short term gain on a scheduled event, or with the intention of buying a company that I think is cheap and will compound. That's where the disconnect was in my thinking. Thanks!

You are correct. I think the only time this might not be true is when the stock is hard/expensive to borrow. Then the put/call parity breaks. I remember this happening with Fairfax back in 2006.

I'm confused by this. The ROE is guaranteed to be lower than it "should be" every single year, forever. If it would normally compound at 10%, it's instead going to compound at 8%. Investors who look at it will see the numbers and think, "After 20 years, if FIH is making 10% on its investments, then I've lost almost a third of my return as a result of fees going to Fairfax." Why do you think that doesn't matter?

I don't own Fairfax India because I don't want to pay the management fees that Fairfax India returns to Fairfax, and because I think it's more likely than not that Fairfax will eventually do something that benefits Fairfax greatly at the expense of Fairfax India shareholders.